Why Kerry Failed at Peace

The failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East peace initiative has left relations between Israelis and Palestinians in worse shape than before he started. If talks are not restarted immediately and under very different terms, it might discourage future U.S. presidents from trying for peace. Failure also encourages the parties to get back to the blame game and to take negative unilateral steps against each other.

But success is not possible without a radical rethinking of the American approach. Ambassador Martin Indyk, the U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, declared in Washington last week that the entire American approach to peace talks was based on the idea that interim agreements do not work. Referring to the 20 years that have passed since Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat shook hands at the White House and set the Oslo peace process formally in motion, Indyk declared the effort an overall failure. “An interim period that was designed to build trust has in fact exacerbated mistrust,” he said, explaining that this was why the Obama administration had pushed for a permanent, conflict-ending solution.

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I started the Oslo process in 1992 along with Tarje Larsen, the Norwegian diplomat. And I agree that it was a mistake, back then, not to try to do what Indyk suggests now: to negotiate for a full agreement. I did propose such a step in 1993, but Rabin didn't give me the green light at the time, and of course the Israeli prime minister was tragically assassinated two years later. Missing a chance 21 years ago, however, doesn't mean that the same opportunity exists now, when we have a very different set of players.

Today I could not disagree more with Indyk’s assessment. In fact, the present breakdown of talks should take us to the opposite conclusion: Only an interim or gradual agreement will work. Such an accord, which means the establishment of a Palestinian state immediately within a bigger area than the Palestinian Authority today, and a timetable for reaching a full peace agreement, may be the only feasible solution at the moment.

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The biggest mistake President Obama could make would be to try to bring the parties back to the table in order to continue things as they are, in an effort to negotiate a permanent agreement. The chances of achieving that were close to zero to begin with, and now it is even clearer that there is no chance at all. The main effort should have gone in a different direction: achieving an agreement on establishing a Palestinian state with temporary borders, a schedule for reaching a permanent agreement between the new Palestinian government and the government of Israel and the presentation of a detailed U.S. position regarding the main characteristics of a permanent agreement. Rather than declaring a “time out," this should be the main effort of the Obama administration. There are breaks in sports; there is no intermission in political life.

Kerry’s efforts were very much appreciated, and so was the backing of President Obama, even though he was skeptical about the chances of success. The problem was that Kerry acted as if he had to find compromises between the policy positions of Arafat and Rabin 20 years ago – between a Palestinian leader who came to the conclusion that it was best for his people to make peace with Israel, and who genuinely represented the majority of his people, and an Israeli leader who was willing to pay the price of peace. But the situation is far more complex now, and it is hard for me to understand how Kerry and his experienced advisers refused to accept the huge differences between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership that existed then and what we have now.